Security of mobile terminals, such as portable communication devices (PCDs) (e.g., cellular telephones), portable digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, or any suitable device that is capable of communicating with a wireless network, is increasingly important to owners of electronic communication devices. Security may be particularly important in relation to distributed applications such as online banking applications, or the provision of access to web-based services or enterprise networks. In some cases, cryptographic protocols may be used to provide security in these and other environments. These cryptographic protocols may use “credentials” that include items of secret data (e.g., keys) and associated algorithms that apply cryptographic transforms to the secret data.
Approaches to managing secure storage and use of credentials can range from relatively cheap and flexible mechanisms that are not as secure (e.g., password managers) to more secure, but expensive and inflexible mechanisms (e.g., hardware tokens). Thus, it may be desirable to provide relatively high security without great complication, inflexibility and expense.